Really Good, Actually(75)

“Danielle?” Merris sighed again. “I don’t know. I think I couldn’t be what she needed, and she couldn’t forgive me for it. Her whole childhood, she was reaching out for something that, for whatever reason, I couldn’t or didn’t want to give. And then her father got sick, and we handled it in completely opposing ways—it’s all a bit miserable. Let’s not get into it.”

Merris pulled on her gloves and readjusted her scarf, acting out the beginning of an exit. I wanted to tell her I’d listen to her talk about anything, to march inside right now, make a pot of tea, and ask her to start from the beginning. I told her she’d listened to more than enough of my miserable tales, and if she ever did want to get into it—

“I don’t,” she said. “Thank you.”

“You’ve been so generous,” I told her. “I wish I’d been a better friend to you.”

“Oh, Maggie,” she said. “We’re not friends. We’re just two people having a hard time.”

I turned the key and the soft hum of the motor went quiet. It was raining a little, and I could see Inessa peering out her bedroom window on the second floor. When she noticed me looking up at her, she snapped the curtain shut.

“I’d like, if you wanted, to try to be friends,” I said. “I know my living here was probably a step too far, but I wasn’t just hanging out with you because I was having a breakdown. I think you’re kind of amazing.”

Merris laughed lightly, and I clenched every muscle in my body.

“There’s a joke in there about which of us really took the step too far, but I don’t have time to think of it,” she said. “Anyway, must get inside and mess around with these bands. I could lose my mobility, you know.”

She opened the car door and unbuckled her seat belt, slowly pulling one leg and then the other out onto the ground. I helped her into the house, as I did every week. We stood in the foyer and she said, “Thank you, dear,” and I went down into the basement and lay flat on the floor.

I moved out a few days later, very early in the morning, mostly to avoid Inessa. I left a thank-you card and a box of fancy dried fruit. I had stayed up late the night before, dusting and scrubbing every surface, trying to reset the place to how it had been. As I finished a final round on the bathroom fixtures, Lydia came wheezing down the stairs, jumped on my bed, and stayed there. The next morning I kissed her goodbye, letting her huge tongue go a little bit in my mouth, something I usually fought against, but which she seemed perpetually desperate to make happen. I opened the door to upstairs and she scrambled off, to eat and drool on things and sleep in the sun. I left my keys on the kitchen counter with my gift and took a bus to Kingston, where my dad picked me up.

A week later I used what would have been my rent money to book four sessions with Helen. In the lead-up to our first, I started a note on my phone identifying potential topics for discussion, which seemed like a smart move, until I opened the document in her warm beige office and it read “legs,” “is inner peace real,” and “having a skull is actually insane.” I abandoned the list and we talked about Merris (relationship to), my body (negative feelings toward), and doorframes.

“I learned recently,” I said, “that straight men have this compulsion where it’s important to reach up and slap the top of the doorframes they pass under. Did you know about this?”

“Vaguely,” said Helen. She adjusted the knot in her silk scarf and took a sip of herbal tea. Her mug was covered in smiling painted bees.

“Well,” I said, “I had no idea this was happening. I can’t believe all men, or even some men, have been doing this my whole life. Do they not have anything better to do?”

Helen wrote something down. “And what about this behavior bothers you in particular?” When she turned the mug to access its handle, I saw it had the words bee calm on it in block letters dripping with honey.

“It doesn’t bother me,” I said. “I just think it’s weird.”

“Seems to me that it bothers you a great deal.”

There followed one of those long and bothersome therapy silences.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I wonder: Is that what it’s like to have a brain not filled with questions about whether you’re too old or fat or dumb or smart or in immediate danger of some kind? Fucking . . . doorframes?”

I realized I did sound quite angry. I apologized to Helen; I’d been reading too many threads about street harassment.

“I shouldn’t really be mad about anything,” I said. “Statistically speaking, I’m one of the luckiest people that has ever been born.”

Helen told me that although that was true from a historical perspective, I was still allowed to have feelings, even difficult or ungrateful ones. Those feelings were, apparently, an unavoidable part of life, and it was better to notice and name them than pretend they didn’t exist.

“Alright,” I said. “I’m angry that my threshold for discomfort is so low. Like, I can function totally normally as long as there is no uncertainty in my life, but if I’m waiting to learn the outcome of something, the entire day is fucked.”

I looked at Helen. She was doing “placid” as a charades clue.

“Unfortunately,” I continued, “my threshold for what counts as ‘something’ is very low, so we’re talking, like, responses to emails, likes on a tweet, results of a routine pap smear . . . This year has been like having a rash, continuously, for months. And also? I’m angry about glamping.”